Whitsun holiday

Hathern Band taking part in the Whit march, May 2015

Something in some of the recent issues of the local newspaper, ‘The Loughborough Echo’, caught my eye: the editor had set a challenge, and not one for ignoring such things, I set about researching and finding an answer to the question. What a journey that’s been!! From Loughborough to Nottingham, back to Hathern and off to Clifton in Nottingham, and then up to the North West of England – all on a Whit weekend!

In the Nottingham Evening Post of 3 June 1936, a contributor to the newspaper wrote about the Whitsuntide holiday, and the staging of what was often the main event of the year in villages – the ‘walk’. The contributor suggests that the tradition of walking at Whitsuntide is associated with the ‘benefit clubs’ and friendly societies that existed in the nineteenth century, some, as he says, going back even as far as around 1790 in Nottinghamshire. The role of the friendly society (1) was to provide aid (financial, medical and social) to its members, long before the inception of the NHS and social services of today. There is also a suggestion that these Whit walks were born out of processions of Sunday school children who were celebrating the coronation of George IV in 1821.

The Whit walks were full of pomp and ceremony and helped to unite the gentry and landowners with the rest of the village population, and all members would join the procession. Of course, the better the event, the more new subscribers were enrolled and therefore the more help could be distributed. During the procession, the walkers would stop perhaps stop off for a blessing at the local church (let’s not forget that Whitsun is the Christian festival of Pentecost, a time which commemorates the holy spirit descending upon Jesus’s disciples), and then at various of the big houses, where sometimes they were provided with refreshments, before probably ending up at a large banquet for everyone.

The walks, the banquet and the evening dancing were usually accompanied by the village band, something which most villages had. From the report of the event that appeared in the Nottingham Daily Express of 29 May 1860, it appears that, as ever, the British weather was not at all conducive to the enjoyment of such an outdoor event as the Whit walk, although, thankfully some people did attend. There appears to have been no sport, no boating on the river Trent, which apparently was very choppy, and no music, singing or dancing. It was the wind that was really the problem, making the day feel chilly. People had been expected to picnic at Clifton Grove (2), to dance at the arboretum, and fish and take boating trips on the Trent. What did take place, however, were the friendly society dinners which included groups such as the Independent Lodge of Oddfellows, and the Ancient Order of Foresters.

So, bands were normally a big part of the Whit walks. Our nearest local band is Hathern Band, an amalgamation of two bands in the village, one which formed around 1856 and one later in the nineteenth century. The history of the band is on their website, and it was the entry for the 1860 Whit Week that sent me on this journey.

More recently (2010 and 2015 that I know about) Hathern Band have taken part in Whit marches around Manchester: there are two, one based around Saddleworth, the other around Tameside, and it was the latter which Hathern took part in. For the bands taking part, the marches are actually a banding contest, which is supported by thousands of spectators. Luckily, some of the band's performances have been recorded and saved for posterity! Have a listen to performance 1, performance 2, performance 3 and performance 4! And see some pics from the event:

It is but a short journey from Hathern to Loughborough, and so back to the challenge I mentioned at the beginning of this post, which was to discover who was ‘Heywood’, a writer who contributed articles to the Loughborough Echo back in the 1930s. You might guess from reading this post, that I believe Heywood to be Heywood Chilton, the person who contributed to the Nottingham Evening Post in the 1930s, although so far, this is all I know about the person!

Notes

(1)  I haven’t written much about our local friendly and fraternal societies on the blog – there’s something on the post about UnityHouse, and the Sparrow Hill Theatre – but there’s a bit more about them in ‘Secret Loughborough’.  

(2) Clifton Grove was apparently a bit of an attraction for the people of Nottingham, and was accessed by the ferry at Wilford. I wonder if Samuel Yates (journey Part 1, journey Part 2) chose Clifton for his daily walk in 1819, because of its position on the Loughborough side of the river Trent? By 1874 it was described in Shaw’s ‘Guide to Nottingham’ as follows:  ‘At Easter and Whitsuntide if the weather at all permits, thousands of Nottingham artizans with their wives and families, and young men and maidens, either with sweethearts or to gain sweethearts, flock to the Grove.’ as I discovered on the Nottingham Hidden History Teamwebsite.     

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2020). Whitsun holiday. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/05/whitsun-holiday.html [Accessed 24 May 2020]

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